Seas will rise, and weather may match South Carolina’s

Climate change is costing Cape Codders. It is eating at our shorelines, causing storm surges to overrun our beaches and houses. It is raising the price of our homeowner’s insurance. Our vulnerable sandy habitation, 10 miles wide, is part of a global system of weather that affects us locally, according to four experts who spoke at a climate change forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters at the Harwich Community Center April 28.

The takeaway message is that while belief in climate change is falling, the reality of it is increasing via accumulated science from real events, according to Dr. Eric Davidson, executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center, which looks at climate science from the Amazon to the Arctic. Davidson warned that hard facts prove the dangers of rising global warming. He said that since the world focused its attention on this issue at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, emissions have been lowered in some nations, but by and large, little has been accomplished.

Unless we mitigate, adapt and change now, Davidson said, there will be increased suffering from heat, violent weather extremes, famine, drought and flooding, all of which, data collected, measured and sifted over time show, will increase exponentially. He added that actuarial information from insurance companies supports the data.

Describing global warming as the “parked car effect,” Davidson said that heat from the sun comes through the window, but in re-radiating back out it becomes trapped, heating up the car. The earth’s atmosphere is the same, trapping rising methane, carbon dioxide and other gases from fossil fuel use in a big puffy blanket of molecules that prevent the heat from getting back through the “car window.” Since Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and others have been keeping records, from 1960 to now carbon dioxide has increased from 320 parts per million to 380 parts per million. (The Arab oil embargo of 1973 diminished greenhouse gas emissions briefly by lowering usage.) Davidson says that La Nina and a sun spot cycle actually are cooling the planet somewhat now, but when the solar cycle changes and we enter El Nino, warming will accelerate. Best scenario, the Cape will have a mid-Atlantic-states climate in the future; worst, a climate like South Carolina’s.

Natural cycles of temperature rise have occurred over millions of years, but there is a tremendous spike in overall warmth since the industrial age began, says Davidson; indeed, since human civilizations started agriculture, 2010 is the hottest year on record. Result? Planetary warming is producing events such as Snowmaggedon, record snowfall in the United Kingdom and parts of the US, record rains such as those contributing to the deadliest floods in Russian history, and an increased intensity of rains in New England. (Increased heat can suck up more moisture from seas and freshwater bodies, creating more precipitation as rain or snow.) Natural disasters have increased between 1980 and 2010. There are longer hurricane seasons with fiercer winds. Sixty-seven tornadoes occurred in a four-day period. The list goes on.

Glaciers show a 20 percent loss since the 1960s. How does this affect the Cape? An influx of millions of gallons of cooler water can change the ocean currents. Seas have risen in our area 4 to 6 inches in the past 50 years. Cape Cod's salt marshes (and estuaries) are being changed by sea level rise, threatening their effectiveness as storm buffers and nurseries for sea species.

Megan Tyrell, research coordinator for the Cape Cod National Seashore, says that more extreme rains are affecting amphibian life, changing coastal salinities; that carbon dioxide is acidifying oceans, dissolving the calcium carbonate used to form shells. CORRECTEDPredictions of ocean waters rising from 7 to 79 inches in the next 50 to 100 years, as shown on fastidiously layered maps, indicate that much of the Cape could be severely altered. Tyrell added that Seashore data over decades shows our kettle ponds to be warming, which increases fixed layers of water, keeping the bottom unoxygenated (anoxic) – which kills fish.

Some efforts are in place to counter climate change. The Seashore’s Lauren McKean talked about how the agency is reducing, reusing and changing to renewables where it can as part of a national effort by the park service to cut its carbon footprint. Paul Niedzwiecki, executive director of the Cape Cod Commission, said the county’s Regional Policy Plan takes into account the larger picture, especially of how to better handle wastewater Capewide, through sustainable town initiatives. Climate change causes salt water intrusion into the water table, affecting drinking water and wastewater alike. The Commission would like to see a total systems approach to planning, including human and natural systems, in a climate plan for the region, in the next 12 months, starting with the Smarter Cape Summit this month.

Though the National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society and a host of prestigious scientific organizations have stated that climate change is a fact, Niedzwiecki and Davidson agreed that a large amount of money is being spent to discredit the science, by "faux" research organizations with a political agenda, and that fewer people are actively involved in what the League of Women Voters, which sponsored the forum, and the speakers, say must be done: Showing up. Collecting data combined with civic action will affect policy.

Davidson says that individual conservation measures are essential but that only coordinated efforts by government will fund and enact solutions.

Resources and Ways to Help

Cape Cod National Seashore has many citizen scientist projects that collect needed data for graphs and mapping. The newest will be a cordgrass count on May 15. Contact Megan Tyrell at 508-487-3262, x 0510.

League of Women Voters President Judith Thomas, who emceed, has put solar panels on her house, but wondered whether our municipal buildings might benefit from the same changes. Suggest it to your towns. She did an energy audit with the Cape Light Compact (508-375-6648) and highly recommends it.

Information for the Smarter Cape Summit May 14 and 15 is at www.smartercapesummit.com.

Publications are many; one is: "The Vulnerability of US National Parks to Climate Change" – USGS (publication available online).